3-002-546 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Odalisque, 1842. This highly eroticized harem scene is a fantasy on the part of the artist, reflecting long-standing prejudiced beliefs about beauty. The artist makes a blond and white-skinned woman the focus of the painting. It may be that she is intended to represent a Circassian, an ethnic group indigenous to the Caucasian region (between the Black and Caspian Seas on the edge of eastern Europe and western Asia). Since the 1500s, Circassian women had been singled out in European and Islamic painting and literature as the most beautiful of all.